Roger Wigington: Marketing Fireworks: The Increasing Importance of B2B Influencer Marketing

The increasing importance of B2B influencer marketing woman celebrating in front of fireworks image

As our U.S. readers celebrate the Fourth of July holiday with summer gatherings and fireworks, B2B influencer marketing is generating its own fireworks, having taken on significantly increased importance since the pandemic began. We’ll soon be releasing our official 2022 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report — nearly 60 pages filled with the latest strategy, tactics, operations, software, best practices, integration, measurement, budgeting, trends and predictions from the world’s top influencers at major global brands including LinkedIn*, SAP, Adobe, Intel, Cisco, Demandbase, Oracle, SAS, Deloitte Digital and many more. Let’s take an Independence Day sneak peak at just a few of the hundreds of deep-dive insights into the current state of B2B influencer marketing the forthcoming comprehensive report will contain, beginning with a few words from our CEO and co-founder Lee Odden.

B2B Marketing Gets Elevated with Influence

“Without question, the pandemic has impacted all aspects of business including B2B marketing, with 74 percent of respondents in our survey saying they made adjustments to their go-to market strategies. The good news is that many B2B marketers have emerged from the pandemic as confident: Nearly half of the marketers we surveyed consider their marketing very or extremely successful. A lot of that confidence comes from a focus on what works, and 96 percent of marketers plan to keep some or most changes made in the past two years, including working with influencers. In fact, 71 percent indicated influencer marketing became more important during the pandemic. In times like these, the importance of Influence is critical for brands that need to connect authentically with their buyers and create meaningful experiences. But what’s next? What do digital-first B2B influencers look like? What are the best practices and technologies? How important is it for B2B brands to build influence with their employees? Our forthcoming report answers all of those questions and more including insights from some of the top B2B brands in the world. B2B marketers have a unique opportunity in 2022 to create more authentic, trusted and meaningful experiences for their customers, and our forthcoming report will show you how.”

[bctt tweet="“In times like these, the importance of influence is critical for brands that need to connect authentically with their buyers and create meaningful experiences.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

3 Key B2B Influencer Marketing Trends

1 — Increasing Importance of B2B Influencer Marketing

The power of influence on B2B marketing has increased in importance since the start of the pandemic.

71 percent of B2B marketers have indicated that influencer marketing became more important during the pandemic, and over 70 percent of those who changed strategies due to the pandemic said that influencer marketing became more important.
A third of respondents said influencer marketing directly contributes to sales and revenue, while over half said it helps with brand recognition, awareness, and lead generation.
70 percent of the marketers with extremely successful marketing programs include influencer marketing in their mix.

2 — Elevating With Executive B2B Influence

Executives can be powerful influencers for building thought leadership, adding credibility and humanizing the brand.

Two-thirds of those who work with executives say their program has been very or extremely effective at increasing brand influence.
65 percent of B2B marketers say internal executives have been very or extremely effective at increasing the influence of the brand.
Over 60 percent of respondents said they work with internal executives to grow their thought leadership and influence, and an additional 23 percent said they would like to do so.

3 — Always-On Achieves Higher B2B Influencer Marketing Success

An always-on, engaged community of influencers is more likely to be successful than a periodic, campaign-based model.

100 percent of B2B marketers who reported having an always-on B2B influencer program said it was successful, with 31 percent reporting that it was very successful.
Only 21 percent of respondents said that they are practicing always-on influencer engagement, however.
69 percent of respondents using always-on influencer campaigns said their organization's B2B marketing efforts were moderately successful, versus 55 percent who run periodic campaigns.

Make Marketing Fireworks Year-Round With B2B Influencer Marketing

Our team wishes you a happy and safe Fourth of July, and we hope the sneak-peak insights we’ve shared here help your own B2B marketing efforts spark creativity and newfound success throughout the year ahead. Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing blog for the official launch of our 2022 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report, and in the meantime you can sign up now to get early access to the full report.